April 03, 2008

Running the River with John Blaustein

John Blaustein, a veteran photographer from Berkeley, California, is just one of 26 artists featured in the upcoming SITES exhibition Lasting Light: 125 Years of Grand Canyon Photography. Run the river with John as he talks about getting one of his most compelling shots:

"As a river guide, I made dozens of trips through the Grand Canyon. On a cool, stormy day, we had stopped for lunch on a little beach at the mouth of 140-Mile Canyon, the halfway point through the Grand Canyon. Munching on a sandwich and waiting for the inevitable afternoon thundershower, someone glanced up the talus slope and noticed this bighorn sheep perched on a rock surveying the boats and all the people.

While I'd seen dozens of bighorn over the years, this was the closest I'd ever been to one. I ran to my boat, grabbed my camera with a 200mm lens and started climbing the slope toward the sheep. When he noticed me approaching, he took a few steps up the slope and then hopped onto a big boulder, putting himself in a silhouette from my point of view. Not only that, his pose was a perfect profile, and then he had the courtesy to turn his head right toward me. I shot two or three frames before he turned and vanished up the slope. Lots of luck is involved with this kind of photography--the perfect pose, the perfect steel gray sky, and being there to shoot it!"